


playing haruspex

by batshape



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: 'what do feanorians find sexy? the looming threat of a terrible death?', Brief Mention of Violence, Gen, M/M, bit of a digression on tyelpes mother here as well, celebrimbor is not a fool but he is doomed, he may or may not buy it himself, presence of silvergifting dependent on if you buy everything annatar has going on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:40:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26905261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/batshape/pseuds/batshape
Summary: “You are not the envoy of the Valar I would have chosen for myself, my friend.” At the ensuing sideways look he received, he grinned. “I mean them no offense in saying it. But I think they had employed certain estimations of me, when they sent you and not someone—““Kinder?”Celebrimbor folded his hands. “I meant to say warmer,” he admitted, with a vestigial smile. His eyes shone. “But kinder, too, if you permit it.”:An indeterminate time. A shared bottle of wine.
Relationships: Annatar & Celebrimbor | Telperinquar, Annatar/Celebrimbor | Telperinquar
Comments: 1
Kudos: 31





	playing haruspex

**Author's Note:**

> _‘cause i’m just getting started_   
>  _let me offend_   
>  _the devil’s got nothing on me, my friend_

He could not kill him in Ost-in-Edhil, and he knew it. Celebrimbor was not only ruler of this city occupied by the Gwaith-i-Mírdain, but chiefest among their smiths, and no matter Annatar’s own desires, the skillful contribution of the only grandchild of Fëanor had become invaluable to his cause.

Further, he knew that Annatar’s friendship had become dear to the lord of Eregion. He witnessed the attachment as a physical burden which Celebrimbor carried for him, in his callused hands when he turned Annatar by the shoulder to ask his advice regarding some element of ringcraft, in his eyes which deferred now more readily to Annatar’s own gaze than the opposite, in the soft upward curve of his mouth whenever Annatar spoke well of an apprentice or praised the craftsmanship of a fellow smith. Celebrimbor had never been cold—Annatar doubted he held the capacity within him to be cold, truly—but now he was  _ warm. _

Annatar used this to his advantage.

“Tyelpë,” he spoke in the corridor following supper, and Celebrimbor looked to him with a wide, pleased gaze. It had not been long since Celebrimbor had given him leave with his Quenya name until Annatar had found it beneficial to use it, and he had since progressed to more endearing forms.  _ Tyelpë  _ disarmed with a complete ferocity that Annatar had not considered before his use of the address, and now he used it often.

_ Tyelpë. You will feel my teeth in your flesh one day _ .

Friendship made Celebrimbor eager to ignore the occasional oddities of Annatar’s expressions, as he overlooked his canine smile presently. For Annatar had plied him with wine—Valinorean grapes, salvaged from his own First Age stores, where it had been a luxury only indulged after great victory—and his eyes were bright and his skin hot from the batch’s potency. He tilted his head.

“My friend.”

“Tyelpë,” Annatar repeated, and then revealed the Valinorean bottle from the angle of his sleeves. “I’ve brought the wine.”

Celebrimbor’s teeth flashed in the lantern light. Annatar tilted his own head in conceding mimicry; the lord of Eregion had laughed, without sound.

“Did I err in doing so?” Annatar asked humbly, and Celebrimbor laughed again. This time it was a charmingly audible laugh, one which showed his teeth for a greater eternity of time, and they were starkly white against the color of his skin. Annatar imagined wearing a carcanet studded with such fine teeth and tightened his grip on the neck of the bottle.

More and more, he found himself experiencing the peculiar regret of having styled his  _ fana  _ in the shape and color of Celebrimbor’s golden cousin, and not the more interesting silhouette of Telperinquar himself. He admired the glint of white teeth and the warmth of brown skin, of shining gold laid against his collar and dripping from the points of his ears. He even occasionally found an argument to be made for the mess of cheerful dark curls, which Annatar had never thought suited himself, in the shape and hue of Celebrimbor, Noldorin lord of Eregion.

Such were criticisms to reflect upon in the event of devising his next  _ fana _ , certainly.

“No, my friend,” Celebrimbor replied (issuing the term  _ friend _ much more freely now that he was intoxicated). “In fact, I very much appreciate the forethought.”

Annatar gestured vaguely with the bottle. “I thought—on the parapet—“

“An excellent idea,” Celebrimbor agreed eagerly. “To the parapet, then.”

And the lord of Eregion gripped Annatar suddenly by the wrist—and  _ rage _ flared in him, at being touched, for he was not  _ touched  _ within permission in this age, had not been touched so casually either in the previous one, for there was always  _ purpose  _ to an affection, and he thought of  _ teeth studded in a collar _ —and pulled him clumsily along. Celebrimbor really was quite stupid.

Annatar found pleasure in reminding himself of this. Too often now he found himself entertaining the briefest fantasies of pity for Telperinquar Curufinwion, as the snare which had snapped closed around him was nearly superfluously perfect in design. Truthfully, there really was no hope for Celebrimbor, and there had been no hope since Annatar arrived in Ost-in-Edhil and the daughter of Finarfin made her slinking exit.

And this—that he had fallen so easily, so unwittingly—was enough to feed Annatar’s irritation too, occasionally. Annatar had not laid a simple nor abbreviated siege to his affections, and yet, they had not been so grand or thrilling an obstacle to conquer. Celebrimbor had not personally allowed Annatar entry into Ost-in-Edhil those years ago; the gates themselves were always left open. Such had been a point of pride to the capital’s lord then, and such remained a point of pride now. Here was a ruler openly begging to be made vassal, and Annatar had relished the ease of entry then. 

And once he had gained an audience with the lord, it had been a simple task of purporting himself as just proud enough to be of importance, and yet arguably rumpled enough to beget a lesser being’s self-identification. Celebrimbor did not tend to speak at length. Nevertheless, it was clear at first meeting that he was a delicious mix of familial arrogance and embattled morality which Annatar would have found simple enough to manipulate—had Celebrimbor been easily tempted to ever indulge these innate failings.

But Celebrimbor was not—easily tempted, that was—and such was the reason for Annatar’s extended time waging war for Celebrimbor’s intimate trust. Annatar had needed to approach the matter in a more honest way, and honesty was not his area of expertise. (Largely, he found it inane, and boring, and perhaps he was a fraction less skilled in it than he was in falsehood. Celebrimbor had no need to know this.)

And so: wine. Annatar had used it for more nefarious counselings before, and he imagined he would do so again. Tonight, he had no intentions to plead for command of an army, or negotiate his way into possession of a fortress, or charm a Vala into ceding to Annatar complete artistic liberty over captive Noldorin princes.

Tonight, he merely required trust and affection, and an inebriated Celebrimbor carried trust and affection in bounds.

Over the parapet, Celebrimbor leaned, and Annatar considered only briefly the pleasure of placing both hands on his shoulders and shoving him to his death. He set the bottle on the balustrade and watched him, unblinking.

Celebrimbor said, “Narvi arrives tomorrow with her company,” and Annatar did not wish to speak of Narvi. He frowned.

“I will keep to myself, then,” he said, and foolishly, Celebrimbor laughed.

“She does not dislike you,” he counseled. “She told me, last time she visited, to tell you that. It had been intended as a compliment.”

“I did not feel complimented,” Annatar replied stiffly. He did not care for Narvi or any of her company, as he did not care for any of the dwarves. They reminded him, unwillingly, of a past service. “I believe that, for all the trouble to which you have gone to learn the customs of the Naugrim, that they could benefit from learning a bit of your own.”

“It was never trouble, Annatar, but interest.” Celebrimbor smiled gently to the darkened sky. “Much of what I learned of the dwarves, I was taught long before Narvi was even begotten.”

Annatar particularly did not wish to speak of the begetting of dwarves. He scowled.

“And even so, it is not as if my people’s customs are your own,” Celebrimbor added. Annatar uncorked the bottle with his lengthening teeth, and imparted to Celebrimbor a nearly honest grimace. “Most of the Eldar, for example, would never do  _ that _ in polite company.”

“Do I offend in doing so?” Annatar passed him the bottle. He felt the warmth of a Valinorean vine in his adopted veins, and tapped his slender fingers on the balustrade. “I will amend it.”

“No,” replied Celebrimbor softly. He tipped the bottle slightly to his mouth. “You offer no offense.”

Annatar watched him in silence. Celebrimbor’s expression was guileless, his gaze muddled with the most potent wine which remained in Arda. The scar which tracked from his jaw to the inner curve of his cheek shone thin and silver in the starlight.

Celebrimbor said, “Tell me of Valinor.”

And Annatar’s fingers stilled upon the balustrade. He schooled his expression into pale disinterest.

“You have your own memory of the place,” said Annatar quietly. “I do not see how—“

“I was very young,” Celebrimbor said. “And it was very long ago. Your absence—forgive me, but it is true—your absence has hardly lasted as long.”

His fingers were yet very still. Annatar blinked.

“I apologize,” Celebrimbor amended suddenly, his brow furrowing, “if raising the topic is offensive.”

“It is not.” He imagined shoving him over the railing, counting the seconds hungrily that it took for his body to make disastrous contact with the courtyard stone below. He imagined cutting out and devouring his tongue. He imagined painting his lips with the blood from his mouth.

“It is,” Celebrimbor replied. “I apologize. I can see in your face that—“

“You can see _nothing_ in my face,” snapped Annatar—for it was _true_ , for he had hidden it all, for there was nothing in any expression which would betray him to Telperinquar Curufinwion, most earnest of fools, and he _knew_ it—

He placed his hands firmly on the parapet. He did not breathe.

“I am sorry.” Softly, Celebrimbor lifted a hand. Annatar recoiled, and Celebrimbor’s hand remained adrift, intentionless, in the cool space between them. “I am not entitled to your memories of your home.”

“You are not,” Annatar agreed tightly, and his knuckles whitened on the balustrade. He did not quite understand his own offense. He kept to his chest no great precious memories of Valinor. Nor was it the casual manner with which Celebrimbor still distributed orders which had sparked his rage. (For Annatar fell easily into the role of second-in-command even now, and could necessarily deceive himself that it was only a minor offense to do so in the service of an incarnate.) He did not understand why he had not lied.

He regretted partaking of the wine. Evidently, it had made him stupid.

Celebrimbor was silent. Annatar, too, did not speak. Celebrimbor leaned more heavily over the parapet and closed his eyes, and Annatar counted the seconds.

“You are going to fall to your death,” Annatar said at last, flatly. He folded his hands precisely together. The stone beneath them was cold.

“Not unless I am pushed,” Celebrimbor replied evenly. His eyes remained closed, and Annatar studied the shadowed planes of his face.

He asked, derisively, “Is that an invitation to push you?”

Celebrimbor did not flinch. He hummed. 

“Narvi will be upset if you do. Then she may actually intend to insult you, come tomorrow.” 

“Do you think that is enough to stay my hand?” Annatar nearly sneered, and then saved the effort of an expression for when it would be appreciated. Celebrimbor was not looking at him.

Annatar regretted partaking of the wine. Annatar wanted to be looked at.

“Do you want to push me?” Celebrimbor did not move. His tone was muted, largely unconcerned. A spectre of a curve lingered on his mouth, and Annatar thought to push him. Annatar thought not to push him.

“I am considering it,” he confessed, and now Celebrimbor smiled with his teeth.

“I will keep that in mind,” he said, and that was all. Annatar tipped his head.

“That does not worry you?” he inquired, for he was warm and slightly intoxicated and wished to push the bounds of his own deception. He had become furiously bored in Eregion, aided by others’ naive kindness in his disassembly, and Annatar wished for a  _ challenge _ . Annatar wished to be questioned. “That I have thoughts to push you?”

Celebrimbor shrugged. “Do you wish it to worry me?”

“I am sorry?”

Celebrimbor inclined his head. “Do you wish it to worry me?”

“No,” said Annatar. “Though I do not understand how that is any comfort—“

“It is not, really.” Celebrimbor watched him earnestly. “You are making a face.”

Annatar flattened the expression from his mouth. Celebrimbor, by now accustomed to Annatar’s strange habit of dressing and undressing himself in posturing emotion at a whim, did not recoil. Annatar found that he was pleased to be looked at.

“I can see when you are angry with me, Annatar,” said Celebrimbor. “Do you mean to hide that feeling? It does not offend me.”

Annatar said, “You are infuriating. Occasionally.”

“Only occasionally?” Celebrimbor smiled. “I apologize for it.”

“You do not have to.”

“No,” Celebrimbor agreed. “But I would like to. Additionally, I would prefer not to fall to my death at your hands because I am  _ infuriating _ alone.”

“Is that not enough?”

Celebrimbor dipped his head. “We tend to avoid murder for mere offense, in Eregion. One of my people’s customs.”

“You are also irritating.”

“More often than I am infuriating?” Celebrimbor passed him the bottle of wine. Annatar took it.

“Yes.”

“In what instances am I irritating?”

Annatar drank, and set the bottle beside him. He gestured vaguely over the parapet into empty air. 

“You are not what I expected.”

“And this upsets you still?” Celebrimbor smiled gently, at Annatar’s expense. Annatar decided belatedly that this was hateful to him. He took offense, also, at the word  _ upset _ . Annatar was not upset. Annatar was  _ irritated.  _ “What had you expected me to be, those few centuries ago?”

Annatar hummed. There was much he had expected of the lord of Eregion which he had not found, and much for which he had prepared and resultantly found his precautions superfluous. He did not confess this.

“More like your cousin,” he said rather, not completely untruthfully. “Less—” He gestured again vaguely at his person, and Celebrimbor tipped his head.

“The assumption of my character explains  _ you _ , certainly,” he mused, and Annatar narrowed his eyes. Seeing this, Celebrimbor only shrugged.

“You are not the envoy of the Valar I would have chosen for myself, my friend.” At the ensuing sideways look he received, he grinned. “I mean them no offense in saying it. But I think they had employed certain estimations of me, when they sent you and not someone—“

“Kinder?”

Celebrimbor folded his hands. “I meant to say  _ warmer _ ,” he admitted, with a vestigial smile. His eyes shone. “But kinder, too, if you permit it.”

Derisively, Annatar showed his teeth. He said, “You are incredibly vain, Tyelpë, if you think I would be chosen to suit your temperament alone—”

“Were you not?” 

Annatar imparted to him a sharp glance, before noting the tipsy jest in his tone. Celebrimbor had placed his forearms against the balustrade and leaned heavily over the space below. His face was turned to Annatar, and he was watching him with a fatally gentle kind of amusement.

It would be terribly simple to kill him here. Annatar imagined yanking him by his hair to his knees, pressing his thumb against the soft hollow of his eye socket, applying pressure until he began to plead. He imagined the blood.

The mess would be a pain to scrub from his sleeves.

“I do not understand you.” Honesty. He felt as if he should have choked on it, and yet he did not. Annatar frowned.

Celebrimbor did not frown. He blinked slowly, like a cat.

“Does that upset you too?”  _ Still?  _ The word hung unspoken between them. Annatar cursed Celebrimbor, and he cursed himself too.

“No,” said Annatar, and his frown deepened. “Perhaps. I may want to take you apart.”

“Mm.” Celebrimbor shrugged. He shook his hair free from behind his ears, and the gilded points of them disappeared, then reappeared with their jewelry snagged between his curls. “If you mean  _ physically _ , I must tell you that I would immensely prefer that you did not.”

“Another custom of Eregion,” Annatar surmised. Freely, Celebrimbor laughed.

“The keeping of our entrails within our bodies, yes.” Celebrimbor dipped his head. Annatar lifted his own hand, and disentangled Celebrimbor’s dark curls which had caught in the gold of his right ear. 

Celebrimbor said nothing of the touch, and only looked at Annatar with soft amusement once he had finished. Celebrimbor continued, “I apologize, if you find it inconvenient.”

“One can divine a future with entrails,” replied Annatar neutrally. He reassigned his fingers to the railing, even as he saw Celebrimbor was subtly tipping his face to him, so that he might resolve the problem of his other ear. “I saw it done once, by Oromë’s Hunt.”

And this, too, was true, in part, for he had witnessed the practice in Valinor, and it had indeed been perpetrated by the Hunt. But Annatar had performed the deed himself also, more than once, beyond the western shores.

Celebrimbor nodded. Perhaps he had known this, about the Hunt. Perhaps he, too, had witnessed the Huntsman play haruspex, when he was very small.

It would make sense if he had, for Annatar remembered some of the more insignificant details of Celebrimbor’s lineage too, as Annatar remembered hound’s teeth in his own throat. Perhaps Annatar had only told Celebrimbor what he had already known, what he had already seen.

But Celebrimbor did not say so. Celebrimbor remained unsettlingly quiet. His gaze was not quite so wine-bright as Annatar had initially judged, and there was a contemplative tilt to his mouth. His fingers tapped absently against the balustrade. He looked at Annatar, and now Annatar was not certain that he wanted to be seen.

At last, Celebrimbor turned his gaze away, and the movement of his hands upon the railing ceased. “I have little interest in knowing my own future,” he said, very quietly and very gently, and Annatar dipped his head. He thought not.

There passed a long silence, and even so it was not discomfort with this silence which led Annatar to speak again.

“Aulë’s fires are very hot,” said he, eventually, and with his gaze cast out before them, Celebrimbor nodded. “And very even. The flame here is—imperfect.”

Aulë’s fires were not the hottest with which he’d worked, not even the hottest he’d kindled himself—for Annatar had drawn before on wells of terrible roiling power which had been pressed into his chest by icy hands, power which had licked and sneered at his own fire within his  _ fana _ , which had battled his own soul for possession of the body which he himself had made. The fires Annatar had raised with that terrible power had leapt high, dangerously so, and singed the tips of his fireproof fingers.

But Aulë’s fires in Valinor had been  _ even _ , had been tameable, for all that may have been worth.

Annatar turned over his scarless hands and surveyed his palms. “A perfect flame is not necessary, of course. You have worked here with terrible excuses for forgefire, and produced not-terrible excuses for metalwork.”

“The wine does not improve your compliments,” remarked Celebrimbor. Neither of them laughed.

“That is because I do not presently care to compliment you,” said Annatar, and Celebrimbor placed his chin in his hand and looked at him thoughtfully.

“No,” he agreed. He smiled. “As we are talking about you.”

Rage leapt in his chest, and Annatar meant to take him by the throat, to crush his spine to his windpipe and watch the silver treelight leave his self-satisfied gaze. Who was  _ Celebrimbor  _ to say such a thing? Annatar was of a mind to read him the future in his own entrails there on the parapet.

“Ah,” said Celebrimbor, observing his eyes flash. “You are angry again.”

But carefully, measuredly, Annatar only said: “Now  _ you _ tell me something of Valinor.”

If Celebrimbor had further thoughts about the transactional way Annatar held his conversations, or about the unspoken anger which was palpable between them, Celebrimbor did not speak on it. He lifted a careless hand and easily disentangled his hair from the jewelry in his left ear without Annatar’s assistance.

He said, “My mother was a painter.”

This was of no true interest to Annatar. Even so, he closed his eyes, and Celebrimbor continued.

“She was many things: a mathematician and a cartographer, a hobby metallurgist and a very skilled chemist. She was never chiefly a painter, and she mostly abandoned the pastime out of necessity in Beleriand. She created that unquenchable fire compound that the Noldor used in battle which my father loved so much—he nearly burned himself alive after she died, trying to handle it without her supervision.” Softly, with his face tipped upward, Celebrimbor smiled. “The Noldor value polymaths. My grandfather, in particular, was very fond of her. I was told often in Aman of a comment he made at my parents’ wedding party, that if my father had not had the sense to marry her, that Fëanor would have foregone custom anyway to adopt her as his own.”

Annatar did not speak. Carefully, he folded his hands, primly rearranged his sleeves. He listened.

“And she made maps here,” Celebrimbor continued, quietly. “She worked with the Laegrim and the Sindar—those who would speak with her, anyway, and she was very charming so long as nobody knew of her family affiliation—to chart the continent as best she could in the early days. She was good with space, and for a few decades she worked with my uncle to chart Morgoth’s fortress in the same way she drew out the continent. I do not think she was altogether successful—in any case, if she was correct, the maps did not survive, and none of them lived to tell it.”

Annatar hummed. The accuracy was dubious. Angband had been largely unchartable, for he had aided in the design to make it so. It had boasted halls which did not occupy space, and rooms which held too much space within them, and corridors which folded in on themselves and crushed unlucky thralls between the rapidly narrowing stone; Annatar had built them, had walked them, had known them. Still, he could appreciate the effort to know his work, as limited by the incarnates’ geometry as it may have been.

“But in Valinor,” Celebrimbor said, “in Valinor, she liked to paint. She painted most of our family’s portraits, and I am sure a few of them remain there now. When we left Formenos, she cut the biggest one she had painted of the three of us from its frame and brought it with us.” 

Movement beside Annatar, as Celebrimbor retrieved the bottle from the railing between them. “It burned with Gondolin, unfortunately,” he said. “But I had always been the one to keep it until then.” He shrugged. “It was a good likeness. I was about thirty, and she and my father were still very much in love. You could see it, that she cared very much for us both, in the painting of it.”

Annatar, still, said nothing.

“The canvas was saltwater-damaged by the end, and a bit singed with dragonfire, and I had never been taught to restore the things, but it had been my favorite of her paintings in Formenos. I was glad it was the one she had taken.” Celebrimbor tipped the bottle to his mouth and, finding it empty, laughed very quietly. Annatar opened his eyes.

“Most of that,” Annatar drawled, “was not about Valinor at all.”

“No,” agreed Celebrimbor. The bottle was set again between them. “But I have told you before—Valinor was a long time ago. I was very young. I do not remember it as well as you may think.”

He had said:  _ I am not entitled to your memories of your home. _ Annatar turned his gaze upon him.

“I am sorry that they are dead,” he said, though he was not sorry at all. “And I am sorry that you left.”

(He was not certain if he was sorry about this. Certainly, the presence of the Noldor in Arda had presented many problems through the centuries which Annatar would have preferred to avoid. Perhaps this thought was the cause for the brief ache between Annatar’s adopted lungs.)

Celebrimbor’s hands tightened on the railing. He said firmly, “It was very long ago.”

“That does not mean it does not matter,” murmured Annatar, and he did not look away from Celebrimbor’s face. “Time does not always heal.”

Celebrimbor met his gaze. He asked, very quietly and measuredly, “What would you know of it?”

Scorched hands kindling cold fire in his chest, and a terrible, wonderful agony when that fire  _ ate _ and ate and ate away at his edges. A great storm brewing on the horizon as he stood and watched and sneered upon it, his own arms raised in defiant mockery of the lord of the air. A dog’s teeth ripping from his throat meat and nerve and sinew, as blood and the knowledge that he would not Sing again like he had ever Sung before poured from his neck. His own laughter, climbing high and breaking on stone and iron ceilings, causing the creatures that roosted there to scatter in an echoing whisper of leathery wings. Soldiers arranged in lines, in lines, in lines, who never stood still enough.

Annatar frowned, very gently.

“Nothing, I suppose,” he confessed. “Except beyond what I have been told.”

“Ah.” Kindly, Celebrimbor smiled. “Of course.”

There was no tragedy in Valinor, not for a few thousand years. There was no opportunity for Annatar, faithful servant of Aulë the Smith, to know anything of the healing properties of time.

He was suddenly very tired. When he looked again to Celebrimbor, the Lord of Eregion had tipped his face into his hands.

“Tyelpë.”

“A moment,” replied Celebrimbor, though the words were muffled by his fingers. “The world has begun to spin.”

Annatar laughed, cool and clear.  _ Tyelpë. I want so dearly to kill you.  _ Why was he trying so ardently to convince himself otherwise? Surely, that was what this night was about. Annatar, losing focus. Annatar, losing sight of what he had been, and what he was to be. “It is always stronger than you think.”

Celebrimbor swore into his palms. Quite lowly, he confessed, “You know, I did not mean to tell you any of that at all. About my parents.”

“Well,” said Annatar, and he laughed again. Perhaps—perhaps, perhaps—he had not lost focus quite as much as he had thought. “I am very charming. It was not uncommon that I was the recipient of many spilled secrets, before I came to you in Eregion.”

Celebrimbor laughed. Fractionally, he lifted his head from his hands, and his teeth flashed white between his caged fingers. Annatar was very envious of such teeth. He decided, when he killed Celebrimbor at last, that he would keep them.

_ “Charming,” _ Celebrimbor repeated, like he did not believe it. “You, my friend?”

And he must have meant to step backward from the balustrade, but Celebrimbor was now very drunk indeed, and he stumbled in the process. Annatar, swiftly, caught him about the waist and held him at a distance, righting the set of his weight upon his heels. His own head spun gently, though Annatar found this largely beside the point.

“Of course,” said Annatar, and he smiled. Celebrimbor tipped downward his gaze, and blinked widely. “I have always been charming.”

“Hm,” Celebrimbor mused, and his mouth turned soft and thoughtful. His hair was again snagged in the jewelry of his ears, but Annatar made no movements to amend it. In Celebrimbor’s eyes, Annatar recognized the gentle kindling of curiosity, and bit down delightedly on his tongue. At last, a challenge. A questioning.

Celebrimbor, gaze unfocused, hummed. He murmured, “I may also want to take you apart, my friend.”

And Annatar wanted to sneer. Annatar wanted to bare his teeth, to snap them, to murmur most dangerously,  _ Tyelpë. I would like to see you try.  _

(Annatar wanted to let him.)

Instead, Annatar only removed his hands from Celebrimbor’s waist. He took a hand through his own goldspun hair carefully, and preened.

“I promise you, Tyelpë, that there is no need,” he said. Smoothly he took up the empty wine bottle from the balustrade and tucked it in the crook of his elbow. Annatar turned his back on the wide dark space beyond the parapet and offered Celebrimbor his free arm. 

The doomed lord of Eregion accepted the gesture, pressing his fingers against the elegant folds of his sleeve. Annatar tipped his chin to meet his eyes, and smiled.

He said, most charmingly, “I am quite certain that I already know my future.”

**Author's Note:**

> i wanted to write something about curufin's unnamed wife for finwean ladies week, but i have immense doubts (given my academic responsibilities and the time constraint) that that is going to happen, and i've been sitting on a mostly-completed draft of this for quite a while. so i've decided to post it.  
> (this was actually originally only part of a different fic i was writing a while ago, which was about three times the length with no end in sight. i ultimately scrapped that, but this was among the salvage)  
> you can find me on tumblr at batshape.tumblr.com!


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